The present invention relates to heating components of an aircraft engine and more particularly to heating the leading edge of an aircraft engine.
The accretion or buildup of ice on an aircraft engine is undesirable. In order to reduce ice buildup, it is known to introduce heated fluid from one part of an engine to the other components of the engine. One problem with these methods is that distributing thermal energy evenly throughout the part to be heated is difficult. As a result, either ice buildup happens on portions of the component that are not heated sufficiently or additional fluid flow from another part of the engine is needed to provide the required thermal load. Such an increase in fluid flow reduces efficiency of the engine. Accordingly, there is a need for an apparatus to more efficiently use fluid flow to heat an aircraft component.